


kusanagi-san cut his feet

by shslduelist (joeri)



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! - All Media Types, Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS
Genre: Family Feels, Gen, Panic Attacks, Platonic Cuddling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-08
Updated: 2018-10-08
Packaged: 2019-07-28 02:35:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16232459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joeri/pseuds/shslduelist
Summary: sometimes yusaku spends the night at shoichi's house.





	kusanagi-san cut his feet

**Author's Note:**

> few things: the cuddling/physical closeness in this fic is platonic and brotherly/familial. i dont ship shosaku. at one point yusaku mentions thinking of him as looking sexy. its a kid thinking that an older dude is attractive bc kids get crushes, thats all. i refer to him as 'kusanagi-san' in this fic purposely because that is what yusaku calls him and the fic is kinda sorta from his pov. cool!

It’s not all bad.

Yes, Yusaku’s having a panic attack and it’s loud— _always_ so loud but the thing is, it isn’t his fault. We know this. Kusanagi-san, patient as he always is, knows this.

But Yusaku—

To him, the roar of a thousand tiny machines are revving up inside of his skull, and somewhere in the middle there is a child being chased down by a monster too fast, too cunning and too smart, too _devious_ for him to counteract. There’s a numbing in his fingers. There’s flashing lights behind his eyes and there’s a fear like a great big rock settling like sediment in his stomach.

The fear is twofold:

The tragedy of ten years ago notwithstanding, there’s a cocktail of worse terrors when he remembers why there's no longer a lava lamp sat up on the nightstand two inches away from his side of the bed.

Kusanagi-san’d always been that type of man, Yusaku figures, who got to be twenty and realized he’d never had a lava lamp because his family never bought him a lava lamp. What better way to celebrate his first ever paycheck than to buy a lava lamp? Half of its goopy insides were midnight blue; the other, white. Glitter confetti accompanied the flow, and when Yusaku asked that it be turned on while they slept, Kusanagi-san couldn’t hide that gleeful sort of glow when he said “Yeah, sure!” that reminded Yusaku that he’d been an older brother before meeting him.

That same eagerness to be helpful and useful. Maybe it wasn’t innate in all big brothers, but it wasn’t as if Jin was asking him any favors.

Sometimes Yusaku thinks that Kusanagi-san is doing for Yusaku because he can’t do for Jin.

Sweet Jin— only ever smiles with a far away look in his eyes like his face is trying to make it happen but his brain forgot how. Kusanagi-san asks them both in the same tone of voice if they’d like the music up louder. Yusaku’s the only one to answer.

The point is, that lava lamp’s broken now.

Little silver stars and the scent of ethylene glycol had littered the room. It was made worse when Yusaku couldn’t breathe. A devil sat upon his chest and drained the air from his lungs, and he wheezed in ways that Kusanagi-san can’t ever bear to hear. Broken glass scattered dangerously across Kusanagi-san’s carpet.

Like all undergraduate guys whose first wish was for a lava lamp, his second was for shag carpeting. Glass wasn't quite so visible against it. Kusanagi-san cut his feet against glass and did not take himself to the hospital, but took Yusaku into the bathroom and cleaned the chemicals off his body.

Yusaku whimpered sorry in the littlest voice he had.

And he’s never liked it but he’s sixteen. He’s sixteen years old and he doesn’t know how to be. He should’ve skipped past all of this by now and been an adult.

Been an adult who knows how to breathe without clinging to his pajamas because when Kusanagi-san stripped it from him, all he knows how to do is bury his face in his forearms and make himself small against the bathroom sink.

Kusanagi-san ran a shower. The squeaking of the pipes sent a shiver through all of Yusaku’s senses.

“It’s alright,” he’d said while bleeding into the light green tile.

The silence isn’t awkward.

“First time smellin’ what the inside of a lava lamp’s like,” Kusanagi-san says in a grin. “Shit reeks.”

Every silent moment with Kusanagi-san is splendid.

If only they could last.

_I can’t breathe. I can’t. I can’t—_

Threads of silver run the length of Yusaku’s face, crying out from the sides of his eyes and dripping into his trembling fingers.

_I can’t ever escape. This will always be with me. I—_

Kusanagi-san has moved most of his photographs he had of him and Jin far from bedside. A dark blue stain in the carpet magnetizes Yusaku and tries to pull him into it.

_I’m j-just a burden—_

In and out. In and out.

There’s never a problem with the in and out. His breaths come like hiccups and Yusaku covers his mouth.

_Be quiet. Quieter. **Quieter**._

“Yusaku?”

Briskly: “I’m f-fine.”

Yusaku screws his eyes shut tight and tries to find paradise. His ideal place to be is somewhere he’s never known. It’s warm and airy. There’s sand under his toes but in the pleasant kind of way where the grains flow like water, don’t get stuck and don’t harass the cracks in your feet. The scent of the water is inviting and home is only a few steps from shore. Kusanagi-san’s got a flower in his hair— something big and pink with a long style and pollen sacs that droop down near his eyes. He’s laughing at a joke Jin told and Jin is here too.

And Jin hands him a hot dog.

_And Jin is here with them_.

Kusanagi-san is smiling.

Yusaku realizes that he’s smiling too.

And then, Kusanagi-san is shaking him because, well, Yusaku just up and went completely quiet on him. Good on him for finding a way to cope with his trauma under stressful situations but… there’s a panic in Kusanagi-san’s eyes that almost warms Yusaku’s heart when he clings back to him. Their eyes meet in the middle for some reassurance. They mingle, and Yusaku finds that both of Kusanagi-san’s hands are enveloping one of his— _tightly_.

“Yusaku, talk to me. You’re there, right?”

Sniffling back some snot, Yusaku’s chest shudders and shakes and he pops back into composure like a video game character returning from an out-of-bounds position (basically like nothing had even happened).

“I’m alright,” he says, eyes lingering carefully on the worn-in face Kusanagi-san’s wearing— the bags beneath his eyes.

Kusanagi-san’s only recently able to drink but the expression he’s got is carrying many more years behind it. The lines under his eye lids tell Yusaku all about his life spent holding a child’s hand as he navigates the dark, searching for a decade on how to get him out.

So Kusanagi-san opens his mouth and in eight words he breaks Yusaku’s heart.

“I… thought you’d shut down, like Jin did.”

His arms are wobbling like spaghetti noodles but Yusaku forces himself to take Kusanagi-san’s other hand. His eyes are so big.

“You were screaming and crying and then all of a sudden you went silent… and you didn’t make any noise again.”

Swallowing down bits of his own beating heart because, because _wow_ it’s…

It shouldn’t come as a shock to Yusaku but it’s alarming to find out for certainty just how much they lean onto one another…

Yusaku wraps both of their fists together with one another’s, clenching and listening as Kusanagi-san’s heart syncs up with his own. This bed does not belong to him but he has found a place in it. It only makes sense that in some way that only he can, Yusaku return the favor.

It’s not often that Kusanagi-san looks pensive, especially not with the five o’clock shadow he’s presently dressed in, giving him a lackadaisical rockstar sort of look. Men that look this level of lazy sexy shouldn’t be pouting their lips like this. Yusaku thinks this plainly to himself as he buries their hands against his heart.

“I just had a nightmare. I didn’t mean to wake you up again. I’m sorry—”

Paris by Bath & Body Works is Kusanagi-san’s choice of body wash and Yusaku gets a mouthful of it when he’s brought in tight and held around the neck. Kusanagi-san's grip is taut. He sounds almost… angry?

“Don’t apologize to me, idiot. …hell’s wrong with you.”

Nope, still not angry. Irritable at best. Yusaku breathes in slowly. The hint of orange is the closest he’s been to home in so long. These arms around him are all he’s had for _too_ long.

“It’s my job to look after you, that’s our agreement. You help me get Jin back and… I’ll be what you need,” he says, and he rubs a circular pattern into Yusaku’s back soothingly. “‘sides, I like gettin’ up in the middle of the night.”

Yusaku does not move. He remains still as the dead, closing his eyes and letting the other man’s gestures lull him back into a state of repose. His muscles go lax.

“I can’t imagine why you’d like to do that,” Yusaku ribs.

“I’unno. Kinda like the spontaneity of it all,” Kusanagi-san says. “Used to like going for night jogs. Used to do everything at night when I was a hacker full-time, before I decided to take up this café biz.”

There’s a candid cadence to everything Kusanagi-san says. There are too many stories he could tell Yusaku and Yusaku’d just nod in reply, absorbing the memories like sponge until he’d become a perfect encyclopedia of this man’s most indecent activities.

Like buying lava lamps and shag carpeting. Or worse, like the time he found a drug ring on the dark web and got ungodly amounts of cannabis on the low for cheap. That one’s more exciting, Yusaku thinks dimly, focusing harder on the fingers massaging into the space between his shoulder blades.

And they sit like this, Kusanagi-san telling stories and Yusaku falling back into his arms. And falling back asleep.

And it’s not all bad.


End file.
